Photo by Spencer Grant/Getty Images
Photo by Spencer Grant/Getty Images

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What Does a Metalhead Wear to a Funeral?

Sometimes an all-black wardrobe is more of a curse than a blessing (plus new tunes from Blackrat, High Cost, Dropdead, and more).

To Hell And Back is a weekly column in which Noisey metal editor and lifelong hesher Kim Kelly explores the extreme metal underground and recommends her latest faves.

What does a metalhead wear to a funeral?

This is the question that’s been at the forefront of my mind since I got an unexpected text from my dad on Monday afternoon telling me that my uncle—a hale, hearty construction worker and avid outdoorsman—had been found dead that morning. They didn’t know what happened; they still don’t. We’re waiting to hear back from the coroner, and I’ve been operating in a sort of fog, waiting on the call to come home.

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One of the first things that popped into my head after the initial shock was, what am I going to wear to the funeral? It sounds like a trivial concern, but it’s something that I think is a fairly universal amongst those who have committed themselves to a certain subculture and its attendant aesthetic. As someone whose sartorial endeavors have been purposefully restricted to black jeans, black hoodies, leather jackets, and black band T-shirts for the past 18 years, I panic whenever I need to “dress nice” in general. A funeral is an entirely unique beast—one for which, despite my oceans of black clothing, I feel woefully underprepared.

Despite the genre’s overarching interest in death and all things dark and gloomy, metal fashion is terrible for funerals. There’s no one way to look like a metalhead, of course, and we’ve all got our own personal interpretations of what it means to “look metal;” for some people, it means long hair, denim, band shirts; for others, black leather, boots, spikes. It varies by genre, by locale, by environment, but for everyone outside of the most fervent fans of psychedelic-leaning stoner doom, the color black is a major component.

Black as a color of mourning is a distinctly Western idea, one that dates back to the Roman Empire and gained cultural prominence during the macabre-obsessed Victorian Era when Queen Victoria donned black “widow’s weeds” following the death of her husband, Albert, and wore nothing but black until the day she died. In Western cultures, the color itself has long been associated with evil, darkness, mystery, and elegance—all qualities that explain why it’s been so firmly adopted by metalheads the world over (even those in countries like Mexico, Thailand, and China, where yellow, blue, and white hold a more morbid cultural significance).

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So, wearing black to a funeral seems perfectly reasonable— and yet. Adults are expected to dress up and look respectable at a funeral, and as a woman, looking “nice” often translates into wearing a dress, and heels, and stockings, and all kinds of other things I don’t own and have little interest in acquiring. The levels of formality expected at these kinds of important events vary by family—for example, my boyfriend got to wear a tuxedo shirt and steeltoes to his brother’s wedding—and yet somehow I don’t think my Catholic Eastern European grandmother would appreciate me showing up for the service in combat boots.

So what’s a metalhead to do? If I was still a bratty teenager, I’d probably insist on at least some ripped fishnets and a Cannibal Corpse shirt, and elicit disapproving glares from every other adult there. However, as a grown ass adult, I’m going to bite the bullet, and buy a sensible black dress and all that, and feel like I’m wearing a “nice lady” costume the whole time—and then dive right back into my leather jacket and Sunrot shirt as soon as I make it back to my dad’s pickup truck. As a lifelong metal nerd, I’ve learned a lot of things—and chief among them is that, sometimes, you just have to suck it up and act “normal,” even if you know that you’re anything but.

Blackrat

This Canadian black thrash war machine's latest album, Dread Reverence, just dropped on Shadow Kingdom, and as always, it's a doozy. Whiskey and blasphemy is the name of the game here, wrapped up in an irresistible blend of howling thrash, primitive black metal, gnarly crust, and manic speed metal. Blackrat's deliciously chaotic metalpunk is as catchy as the plague, and twice as deadly.

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High Cost

High Cost (formerly known as Septic Rot) spew out punk- and powerviolence-flecked grindcore that's as gritty and unforgiving as the Brooklyn gutter they crawled out of, and this self-titled demo (out this week on Tridoid Records) marks their first recorded foray under the new moniker. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of them around town.

Trophy Hunt

Trophy Hunt is a new, hungry young band from Brooklyn that's already making quite a racket with their powerful blend of hyper-political grind and crust punk. They've only issued two songs for now, but clearly, a storm is brewing. I predict that you'll be hearing a lot more about them soon.

Dropdead

Providence has smiled upon us and bestowed upon us a new Dropdead recording. The hardcore legends' new EP, Arms Race, drops December 7 via their own Armageddon Label, and you're absolutely going to want to cop it. (On a side note, vocalist Bob Otis is still slowly but surely recovering from his 2017 motorcycle accident; if you'd like to chuck a few coins towards his recovery, please do so here).

Rant

Batman is a rich cop and (awesome, snarling, feminist hardcore) punk lives.

Dead Void

Turns out Death Void's perfectly repulsive, rotting Copenhagen death/doom is exactly what you want to be blasting on your way to a funeral. Trust me.

Kim Kelly is Noisey's resident metalhead; follow her on Twitter if you dare.